Friendster

Social gaming site focused on entertainment

Description

Friendster was a social gaming site and can be considered the first prototype of social networking sites as we know them. It was widely popular in the Asian region and boasted about 115 million registered users in 2011. Through the platform, users could take part in online games, send messages, write comments, post media and share content with other users publicly or privately. It was also used for dating, discovering new events and joining new hobbyist circles.

Stats

Category

Social Media

Country

Philippines

Started

In 2001

Closed

By 2015

Number of Founders

One

Name of Founders

Jonathan Abrams

Number of Employees

Between 11 And 50

Number of Funding Rounds

5

Total Funding Amount

$48.5M

Number of Investors

7

Precise Cause of Failure

Bad Market Fit

Business Outcome

Shut Down

Cause of Failure

Friendster seemed like a fun
place to hang out, with all the right bells and whistles to lead the way, what
went wrong, then?

Friendster did two things
particularly well: it offered social gaming and it gave users reasons to keep
coming back to its platform. What it seemed to have missed creating, instead,
was an actual social network. If one
had to point out a major point that made Facebook soar, and that Friendster and
other similar sites didn’t catch up with, was the presence and the emphasis put
on the social news feed feature.

Gaming is fun, but only
until a certain point, while social interactions - of any kind, really - are
always sought after by people. By making the news feed the central part of its
platform, Facebook ensured that people always had new things to interact with
that somehow was still connected to them or their circle of friends. It offered
a never-ending stream of new posts and pictures to like or comment on and it
shifted away from the previous focus which was to curate and polish one’s own
profile, which was exactly still one of Friendster’s focus. User use and
registration declined and the company struggled to regain influence and shut
down.

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Friendster was a social gaming site and can be considered the first prototype of social networking sites as we know them. It was widely popular in the Asian region and boasted about 115 million registered users in 2011. Through the platform, users could take part in online games, send messages, write comments, post media and share content with other users publicly or privately. It was also used for dating, discovering new events and joining new hobbyist circles.

Cause of Failure

Friendster seemed like a fun
place to hang out, with all the right bells and whistles to lead the way, what
went wrong, then?

Friendster did two things
particularly well: it offered social gaming and it gave users reasons to keep
coming back to its platform. What it seemed to have missed creating, instead,
was an actual social network. If one
had to point out a major point that made Facebook soar, and that Friendster and
other similar sites didn’t catch up with, was the presence and the emphasis put
on the social news feed feature.

Gaming is fun, but only
until a certain point, while social interactions - of any kind, really - are
always sought after by people. By making the news feed the central part of its
platform, Facebook ensured that people always had new things to interact with
that somehow was still connected to them or their circle of friends. It offered
a never-ending stream of new posts and pictures to like or comment on and it
shifted away from the previous focus which was to curate and polish one’s own
profile, which was exactly still one of Friendster’s focus. User use and
registration declined and the company struggled to regain influence and shut
down.